Neuroscience and the Soul

[ngill09]

I took my grandfather (in his late 80’s) to the hospital the other day to get some brain scans done and they found that he’d developed a fair bit of scarring due to sustained high blood pressure. The results of this range from memory loss to personality changes to headaches to loss of motor skills. My other grandfather got it worse when he was still alive, developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, which totally destroyed his memory, personality, and ability to perceive and understand the world around him.

This got me thinking - everything about our conscious experience, it seems, can now be attributed to the functioning of our brains, and with neurological stimulation or the use of chemicals, that experience can be dramatically altered. The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience. Everything that makes you who you are can be tied back to the brain, and it is clearly not just something that your mind is using to interact with your body. Your memories, you personality, and your experiences can all be dramatically altered by manipulating your brain, and the development of all of these things is dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain.

So here are the questions: What does it even mean to have a soul in light of this? Is it just a relic from a time when the brain was poorly understood? People get hung up about “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing” but it seems like that’s exactly what we are. Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

 

[utunumsint]

The type of dualism you describe would align with Cartesian dualism which proposes that mind and body are two completely separate substances. I don’t think thee is much support for this at all.

I am much more attracted to the Aristotelian understanding where soul is the form of the body where things like the senses, memories, mental images are localized in the body. There is such a thing as sense cognition, which we share with animals. The idea is that the form of our senses is adapted to receive forms of external stimuli, like the form of sight is physically adapted to receive visual stimuli, which are the visual forms external to us. When we react to visual stimuli, the physical form that controls the operations and powers of the eye react. But we are not ultimately aware of our response when we consider what we are seeing. Our responses are almost unconscious. Rather, we see it as an object in relation to us. So somehow that physical reaction of sight got translated into the abstraction of what I am seeing as something real, apart from me. Basically, we interpret or represent the physical change that happens in our eye as the form of some external object. We interpret it relationally.

What is interesting about this realm of relational objects is that it is in this realm that we can identify ourselves as persons among others. We are physically impacted by the form of other things and other beings around us through our senses, but those sense are translated into representations of those forms within us. So we receive the form of elephant relationally without becoming elephants ourselves. Form, in this relational world, becomes the principle of intelligibility. Basically, we convert or abstract that sense (name removed by moderator)ut into information about the external world. That representational information in our minds is not physical. It starts from the physical world, but ends up in a non-physical world of information.

Our memories contain the initial impression of our physical sensations from the senses, and so is a part of our physical anatomy. We can recall this physical representation in our imagination. All of this is part of the body and brain and we share this power with animals.

However, we use our intellectual power to abstract from the physical image contained in our memory. That abstraction process universalizes our sense impression to sort out the merely accidental features of our sensations to focus on the essential universal qualities. Thus we are able to classify our external world in terms of different essential categories, such as humanity, dog, cat, mountain, tree, H2O, gravity, quark. It is in this realm that we make choices between one set of actions and another set of actions, where we perceive not only the essences of physical things, but mathematical concepts, concepts such as truth, justice, right, wrong, law. Scientists have a very hard time reducing all these to material processes. It is really, in many ways, still very much outside of the realm of science at the moment.

You might like to check out Ed Fesers [Philosophy of Mind](http://www.amazon.ca/Philosophy-Mind-A-Beginners-Guide/dp/1851684786) for an introduction. There are other books that presuppose a reductionist materialism, but Eds book gives a pretty fair account of the other side of the story in terms of the philosophy of mind.

God bless,
Ut

P.S. All of what I have described, including the material parts, are considered part of the human soul. That is what Saint Thomas would describe. That part which makes us human, the immaterial part, is our intellect. That relational world. That is the part we believe survives death, although it renders us incomplete.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I took my grandfather (in his late 80’s) to the hospital the other day to get some brain scans done and they found that he’d developed a fair bit of scarring due to sustained high blood pressure. The results of this range from memory loss to personality changes to headaches to loss of motor skills. My other grandfather got it worse when he was still alive, developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, which totally destroyed his memory, personality, and ability to perceive and understand the world around him.

This got me thinking - everything about our conscious experience, it seems, can now be attributed to the functioning of our brains, and with neurological stimulation or the use of chemicals, that experience can be dramatically altered. The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience. Everything that makes you who you are can be tied back to the brain, and it is clearly not just something that your mind is using to interact with your body. Your memories, you personality, and your experiences can all be dramatically altered by manipulating your brain, and the development of all of these things is dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain.

So here are the questions: What does it even mean to have a soul in light of this? Is it just a relic from a time when the brain was poorly understood? People get hung up about “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing” but it seems like that’s exactly what we are. Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

The short answer is that no neuroscientist or team of scientists has demonstrated that the mind/soul can be reduced to the brain . . . even though it is their most cherished endeavour to do so. Some data.

• Joaquín M. Fuster, MD, PhD, a neurological researcher writes in his Cortex and Mind. (Oxford University Press, 2003)
“There are evident correlations between the brain and the mind. In the domains of scientific empiricism, however, where causality reigns supreme, correlation is the Cinderella. Yet correlation is the only logical relationship we can substantiate empirically between the brain and the mind. . . . correlation is all we need for upholding the indissoluble unity of cortex and mind.” (p. viii) underlining mine

• Larry R. Squire, et al., eds., Fundamental Neuroscience, 4th ed., 2013.
“Consciousness is one of the most enigmatic features of the universe. . . . These [conscious] activities are associated with subjective, ineffable, immaterial feelings that are tied in some manner to the material brain. The exact nature of this relationship–the classical mind-body problem–remains elusive and the subject of heated debate. These firsthand, subjective experiences pose a daunting challenge to the scientific method that has, in many other areas, proven so immensely fruitful. . . . However, this same [scientific] method has as yet failed to provide a satisfactory account of how firsthand, subjective experience fits into the objective, physical universe… . . Brain scientists are exploiting a number of empirical approaches that shed light on the neural basis of consciousness. (p. 1091) (underlining mine)

So as of 2013, the scientific method “failed to provide a satisfactory account of how firsthand, subjective experience fits into the objective, physical universe.” And neuroscientists “are shedding light on . . .” consciousness.

• Christoph Koch, The Quest for Consciousness, 2004.
Francis Crick himself (a avowed materialist and atheist) writes in the preface: "Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. . . . there is no present consensus on the general nature of the solution.” (p. xiii) We “will need the labors of many scientists . .” (xiv) Koch, a neuroscientist at Caltech, himself says of his efforts “I argue for a research program whose supreme aim is to discover neuronal correlates of consciousness.” (underlining mine)

• Christof Koch, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, 2012.
Notes that despite the fact that scientists have a general consensus about the tools for explaining many complex biological phenomena “There is nothing comparable for consciousness, no consensus regarding the likelihood of understanding its physical basis.” (p. 25)

• Michael S. Gazzaniga, ed., The Cognitive Neurosciences III. 3rd. ed. (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 2004).
“As the science of consciousness advances, such definitions [Searle’s] will need to be refined and expressed in more fundamental neuronal terms. Until the problem is understood much better, though, a more formal definition of consciousness is likely to be either misleading or overly restrictive, or both. If this seems evasive, try defining a gene.” (p. 1107)

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

Further relevant data is provided by research into neuroplasticity, a term for the phenomena that conscious choices can alter brain structure and function. This shows two-way causality in the relationship between brain and mind. That is, not only can one affect conscious experience and functioning by changes in the brain, one can also affect brain structure and functioning by conscious changes in activity.

Researchers today are investigating the “bidirectional interaction between cultural experience and the brain” and “the neurosciences have identified mechanisms of neural plasticity from the molecular to the systems level.”(1) Numerous studies “demonstrate the surprising degree to which brain processes are malleably shaped by cultural tools and practices.”(2)
For example, studies show that adults who choose to learn Braille show changes in brain structure over those who do not.(3) Changes in brain structure are also seen in musicians proficient in stringed instruments relative to which fingers are used the most.(4) Additionally a study was performed on brain changes taking place in Buddhist monks during meditation–changes which sustain in long-term practitioners over time.(5)

So I am hesitant in the extreme to hold that consciousness or experiences of any kind (much less cognitive activity) are nothing but neuronal events understood as a kind of reductive, eliminative explanation. Correlation, yes; reduction, no.

(1) Elizabeth A. Reynolds Losin, Mirella Dapretto, and Marco Iacoboni, “Culture and neuroscience: additive or synergistic.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5 (June/September 2010): 148-58.

(2) Shinobu Kitayama and Jiyoung Park, “Cultural neuroscience of the self: understanding the social grounding of the brain.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5 (June/September 2010): 111-29.

(3) Alvaro Pascual-Leone and Fernando Torres, “Plasticity of the sensorimotor cortex representation of the reading finger in Braille readers” Brain 116 (February 1993):39-52. see summary discussion in Christopher Ariel Shaw, Jill McEachern, eds., Toward a Theory of Neuroplasticity. Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis, 2001., pp 71-3.

(4) Thomas Elbert, Christo Pantev, Christian Wienbruch, Brigitte Rockstroh and Edward Taub, “Increased Cortical Representation of the Fingers of the Left Hand in String Players” Science 270 (13 October 1995): 305-307.

(5) Lutz, et al., “Long-term mediators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101 (November 16, 2004): 16369-16373.

Also others others note that studying brain damage leads to only tentative findings.
Michael W. Eysenck, Principles of Cognitive Psychology, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis Inc., 2001) p. 6-7.
“What are the limitations of the cognitive neuropsychological approach? First, it is assumed that the cognitive performance of brain damaged patients provides direct evidence of the impact of brain damage on previously normal cognitive systems. However some brain damaged patients may have had somewhat unusual cognitive systems prior to brain damage. In addition, some impact of brain damage on cognitive functioning may be camouflaged because patient’s develop compensatory strategies to help them cope with their brain damage.
Second, the whole cognitive neuropsychological approach is very complex, because there are very often large differences among individuals having broadly similar brain damage. As Banich (1997, p. 55) pointed out, such individuals ‘typically vary widely in age, socioeconomic status and educational background. Prior to brain damage, these individuals may have had diverse life experiences. Afterward, their life experience vary widely too, depending on the type of rehabilitation they receive, their attitudes toward therapy and recovery and their social support network.’
Third, the modular approach may exaggerate the extent to which cognitive functions are localized within the brain. As Banich (1997, p. 52) noted: ‘the brain is comprised of about 50 million interconnected neurons. Therefore, even complex cognitive functions for which a modular description seems apt rely on a number of interconnected brain regions or systems.’
[p. 7] Fourth, the study of brain damaged patients can lead to underestimates of the brain areas involved in performing any given cognitive function. The lesion method generally only permits identification of those brain areas of crucial importance to a cognitive function, but not those that may be partially involved.
Fifth, study of brain damaged patients can lead to overestimates of the areas of the brain directly involved in certain aspects of cognitive functioning. This can happen when the brain damaged region contains axons known as fibers of passage, which connect the brain areas crucially involved in performing a certain cognitive function.”

 

[ngill09]

You can cherrypick quotes all you want about researchers coming up short in their research or the shortcomings of correlation/causation, the fact remains that there is no part of the mind that acts independently of the brain.

And neuroplasticity is a complete red herring. Nothing about the fact that brain chemistry can be altered by experiences implies that the mind exists independently of the brain.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

You can cherrypick quotes all you want about researchers coming up short in their research or the shortcomings of correlation/causation, the fact remains that there is no part of the mind that acts independently of the brain.

And neuroplasticity is a complete red herring. Nothing about the fact that brain chemistry can be altered by experiences implies that the mind exists independently of the brain.

If you read carefully you’ll not I quoted authors affirming the unity of brain and mind. You’ll also note, if you read carefully, that I said causality is bi-directional. And last none of the quotes misrepresents what the primary researchers are claiming: they admit they have not been able to reach a reductive and eliminative explanation of the mind by the brain.

If you want to argue philosophically for a materialistic, physicalist reductive explanation of the mind, go ahead by all means. But the neurological researchers themselves state that they have not yet done it.

 

[polytropos]

The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience. Everything that makes you who you are can be tied back to the brain, and it is clearly not just something that your mind is using to interact with your body. Your memories, you personality, and your experiences can all be dramatically altered by manipulating your brain, and the development of all of these things is dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain.

I would deny that the mind is a substance over and above or separate from the body, which acts through the brain efficient-causally. As in the case of other animals, humans souls are the formal principles of unity of human beings, which encompass all of our activities.

For that reason, there is not even a neat brain-body distinction, as that still smacks of an unacceptable dualism. The difference between a faulty brain-in-a-vat perceptual experience and an actual perceptual experience of the cup of tea in front of me is that one unifies my perceptual content (from the various senses) which can then be used in intentional action toward the cup. My knowledge of the cup has to do with my disposition to interact with it externally. In that sense I directly perceive the cup; I know the cup itself (that is what I can intentionally interact with). I don’t intentionally interact with an internal representation or image of a cup.

My knowledge of the cup is fallible, obviously. I know that the cup is there, but I need not know that I know that the cup is there.

Generally speaking, vexed as qualia are for the materialist, I don’t see there being much “transcendental” about consciousness. I do think our determinate capacity for reasoning, however, does not reduce to a physical organ. Physical systems in principle cannot realize formal operations (addition, modus ponens, the abstraction of a form from a phantasm), as any physical representation is indeterminate over which of infinitely many functions it realizes.

An example: In computation theory, a Turing machine is an abstract mathematical entity that can receive an (name removed by moderator)ut string and perform definite operations on it to either accept or reject. Turing machines can decide/recognize languages which are infinite in size. Modern computers approximate the performance of a Turing machine since they have memory sufficient for doing just about anything you’d need to do. But any physical realization of a Turing machine model is actually limited in its states (and of course cannot recognize every string in its corresponding language, which might be infinite).

The further issue is that even when approximations are suitable for the intentions of human designers, they do not bear actual semantics. A Turing machine can generate context-free languages (which roughly correspond to natural language), but in doing so do not embed any semantics into what they generate, so physically speaking there is a wedge between syntax and semantics. (And, as Searle has pointed out, there is also a wedge between physics and syntax. That some physical entity should even be taken as a symbol can’t be intrinsic to the physical facts about that entity.)

This suggests one argument:
(1) If our mental operations are wholly physical, then our brains realize the semantics of our formal thinking.
(2) Our brains cannot realize the semantics of our formal thinking.
Therefore,
(3) Our mental operations are not wholly physical.

So (I think it can be argued, though this is just a sketch), the soul or principle of operation of a human performs some (but not all) mental actions that are not physically realized. Naturally after death the soul is much reduced, for it is chiefly the principle of operation of a human being, which is an animal and which is bodily under normal circumstances.

 

[moonlight87]

It is not our brains who ‘think’ or make decisions. One of the characterize of the soul is that we have a free will, and intellect. Our soul uses our brain to think. You could compare this with a painter who makes a painting. It is not the pencil who made the painting, it is the painter who needed that pencil in order to make it. Or someone who drives a car. It is not the car who drives, it is the man who uses the car in order to drive.

 

[Counterpoint]

The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience.

I believe the type of dualism you are referring to is Cartesian dualism (a.k.a. substance dualism). The de facto position in Catholic theology is actually hylomorphism, not substance dualism. Hylomorphism holds that there is only one substance, but this substance is composed of two aspects - form and matter (“form” is the soul; “matter” is the body). Form is what “in-forms” matter. Today, we would use the term “information” rather than the term “form,” but the concept is exactly the same regardless of which term is used.

I would argue that hylomorphism is actually the prevailing view in the scientific community. Although scientists are unlikely to employ the term hylomorphism, they are inclined to talk of consciousness in terms of information processing. In fact, they are inclined to look at the entire natural process as information processing. This view is called “digital physics” - a view that is very compatible with the Aristotelian view of hylomorphism.

 

[polytropos]

Today, we would use the term “information” rather than the term “form,” but the concept is exactly the same regardless of which term is used.

This is an interesting point. I think I would agree with you, although I imagine that “information” is used more frequently today because it is perceived to be more metaphysically neutral. But the term has been used more liberally than it should by scientists and philosophers. (Tallis, as well as Hacker & Bennett separately, have I believed commented on this.)

 

[Counterpoint]

This is an interesting point. I think I would agree with you, although I imagine that “information” is used more frequently today because it is perceived to be more metaphysically neutral. But the term has been used more liberally than it should by scientists and philosophers. (Tallis, as well as Hacker & Bennett separately, have I believed commented on this.)

The following is a short video from PBS’s “Closer to Truth” series in which host Robert Lawrence Kuhn discusses this issue (the mind-body problem) with physicist Frank Tipler.

“Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact?”

 

[Beryllos]

This got me thinking - everything about our conscious experience, it seems, can now be attributed to the functioning of our brains, …

… dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain…

… What does it even mean to have a soul in light of this?

In my opinion, this is a beautiful and exciting mystery of God’s creation. Perhaps the answer is related to emergent phenomena; physics leads to chemistry, which leads to life, which leads to brain function, which leads to social cooperation and consciousness (not sure which of those came first), which leads to love, forgiveness, awareness of God, evangelization, and what else? How utterly amazing it is that God created a universe where such wonders emerge out of nothingness!

How do brain injury and degenerative diseases figure into this? I don’t know.

How do we get from a material brain to eternal life? Science won’t (or can’t) predict or explain that. It would have to involve something outside of this finite material universe. It would have to involve God. Our understanding of it would be a matter of faith.

Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

That is an interesting way to think about the afterlife!

 

[Richca]

I took my grandfather (in his late 80’s) to the hospital the other day to get some brain scans done and they found that he’d developed a fair bit of scarring due to sustained high blood pressure. The results of this range from memory loss to personality changes to headaches to loss of motor skills. My other grandfather got it worse when he was still alive, developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, which totally destroyed his memory, personality, and ability to perceive and understand the world around him.

This got me thinking - everything about our conscious experience, it seems, can now be attributed to the functioning of our brains, and with neurological stimulation or the use of chemicals, that experience can be dramatically altered. The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience. Everything that makes you who you are can be tied back to the brain, and it is clearly not just something that your mind is using to interact with your body. Your memories, you personality, and your experiences can all be dramatically altered by manipulating your brain, and the development of all of these things is dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain.

So here are the questions: What does it even mean to have a soul in light of this? Is it just a relic from a time when the brain was poorly understood? People get hung up about “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing” but it seems like that’s exactly what we are. Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

Human beings are a different species of animal than all other animals with brains. If human beings are simply a batch of matter and the firing of neurons, how are we different than other animals with brains? The common definition of human beings is that they are rational animals. Human beings possess an intellect and will that other animals do not. Plato figured it out over 2000 years ago that the intellect and will are immaterial in nature. For humans have knowledge of immaterial universal concepts such as goodness, truth, justice, triangularity, catness, animalness, etc.
The soul is the form of the body and as such there is a very close connection between the two. For the essence of being human is that he/she have a soul with a body. The human body is certainly an amazing extremely complex organism and the brain is an amazing organ of the body. The brain directs the material operations of the body but our intellects and wills are not the brain. Though our knowledge in this life is dependent on our senses, the operation of our intellect and will is independent of any bodily or material organ.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . People get hung up about “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing” but it seems like that’s exactly what we are. Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

This stuff is extremely exciting to think about.
I’m just going to focus on the quote above.

I’m not sure what you mean by “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing”.
Clearly this experience exists because exactly that, is happening.
If you had a stroke in a particular area of the brain, these squiggles might be recognized as being a method of communication, but they would hold no meaning.
So, yes there is physical activity going on.

The problem with your statement is the “just”. Obviously these words have meaning, so there is another type of structure besides the physical. In fact, all the thoughts about the material world, are just that: thoughts. We imagine the cosmos. We create models of how our nervous system functions, and while this activity can be related to neurological events, they are mental happenings. We connect to the world through our perceptions and intellect.

That connection, the fact that all this is happening, that there are these physical and mental structures at all, is the world of the spirit. Your human soul contains all this.
That is why there is a unified experience as you read this post: the underlying physical activity, the colours, thinking, feelings, memories, all the aspects of yourself existing as a creature, whose existence comes from God.
That is why your dementing grandfather deserves as much respect as you or I do. He is more than the collections of neurons. You love him not as just a nervous system but for who he is.

The afterlife includes the resurrection of the body, which will be like this one, but incorruptible, not falling prey to dementia and other forms of illness. I too don’t know what it will be like any more than I could have predicted what this life would be like, had I existed before conception.

 

[edwest2]

I took my grandfather (in his late 80’s) to the hospital the other day to get some brain scans done and they found that he’d developed a fair bit of scarring due to sustained high blood pressure. The results of this range from memory loss to personality changes to headaches to loss of motor skills. My other grandfather got it worse when he was still alive, developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, which totally destroyed his memory, personality, and ability to perceive and understand the world around him.

This got me thinking - everything about our conscious experience, it seems, can now be attributed to the functioning of our brains, and with neurological stimulation or the use of chemicals, that experience can be dramatically altered. The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience. Everything that makes you who you are can be tied back to the brain, and it is clearly not just something that your mind is using to interact with your body. Your memories, you personality, and your experiences can all be dramatically altered by manipulating your brain, and the development of all of these things is dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain.

So here are the questions: What does it even mean to have a soul in light of this? Is it just a relic from a time when the brain was poorly understood? People get hung up about “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing” but it seems like that’s exactly what we are. Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

Science cannot study the soul. So there is no scientific basis to draw this conclusion. Jesus Christ is a real person who is alive right now. He is the son of God. That is reality. We will all be judged by what we said and did with full knowledge.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It seems that, no matter how you cut it, the brain is indeed connected to the mind. But it does not follow that they are essentially one and the same. This has never been proven to be so.

Moreover, the mind of man seems to exist in dimensions that are not purely physical or purely temporal, but also transcendental. While memories, for example, can be altered by chemical substances or chemical imbalances, our experiences of ourselves and others and the history of the universe cannot be explained by referring to them as exclusively physical events. Nor can the power of imagination or invention be explained as purely physical events. No dog has ever imagined God or the Big Bang or Relativity. There is something uniquely transcendental in the human mind that only the mind of God could put there, not some random firings of neurons.

 

[ngill09]

It seems that, no matter how you cut it, the brain is indeed connected to the mind. But it does not follow that they are essentially one and the same. This has never been proven to be so.

Moreover, the mind of man seems to exist in dimensions that are not purely physical or purely temporal, but also transcendental. While memories, for example, can be altered by chemical substances or chemical imbalances, our experiences of ourselves and others and the history of the universe cannot be explained by referring to them as exclusively physical events. Nor can the power of imagination or invention be explained as purely physical events. No dog has ever imagined God or the Big Bang or Relativity. There is something uniquely transcendental in the human mind that only the mind of God could put there, not some random firings of neurons.

Neurons don’t fire randomly.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Neurons don’t fire randomly.

Well, since classic evolution is random as opposed to purpose driven, everything is random.

 

[tonyrey]

I took my grandfather (in his late 80’s) to the hospital the other day to get some brain scans done and they found that he’d developed a fair bit of scarring due to sustained high blood pressure. The results of this range from memory loss to personality changes to headaches to loss of motor skills. My other grandfather got it worse when he was still alive, developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, which totally destroyed his memory, personality, and ability to perceive and understand the world around him.

This got me thinking - everything about our conscious experience, it seems, can now be attributed to the functioning of our brains, and with neurological stimulation or the use of chemicals, that experience can be dramatically altered. The stock answer for dualists to this is that the brain is just a vehicle through which the mind interacts with the world, but this seems profoundly naive in light of modern neuroscience. Everything that makes you who you are can be tied back to the brain, and it is clearly not just something that your mind is using to interact with your body. Your memories, you personality, and your experiences can all be dramatically altered by manipulating your brain, and the development of all of these things is dependent on the physiology and chemistry of your brain.

So here are the questions: What does it even mean to have a soul in light of this? Is it just a relic from a time when the brain was poorly understood? People get hung up about “not wanting to just be a bunch of neurons firing” but it seems like that’s exactly what we are. Also, if our experience in this life is so dependent on our brains, it seems to me that our experience in any afterlife would have to be so dramatically different as to defy all comprehension.

If all our thoughts and decisions are produced by the brain we are not responsible for any of our thoughts or decisions. The hypothesis is self-destructive because the brain is a biological computer which doesn’t know what it is doing.

 

[ngill09]

Well, since classic evolution is random as opposed to purpose driven, everything is random.

Evolution isn’t random either. I don’t think you understand what the words you’re using mean.

If all our thoughts and decisions are produced by the brain we are not responsible for any of our thoughts or decisions. The hypothesis is self-destructive because the brain is a biological computer which doesn’t know what it is doing.

I don’t see how it follows that if our thoughts are produced by our brains we would not be responsible for our decisions. Any more than if our thoughts were produced by our souls.